


257. left unsaid

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [215]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 02:43:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9528389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: After all the lights in the house turn off, click click, and after the sound of footsteps leaves – Helena is through the window.(It was unlocked.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [403\. nocturne](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9516752) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09). 



> Continuation of yesterday's drabble!

After Helena’s twin sees her, Helena starts being more careful. She only comes after dark, only enough to catch a few sour notes, and then she scoots away along the side of the house before anyone can open the window and see her. Sometimes the window does open; when it does she holds her breath, terrified. But nobody sees anything, and nobody says anything, and then the window closes.

(Helena always comes back.

The smart thing to do would be to stop coming back.

She feels something, though. It’s tying her to the girl on the other side of the glass. Like a connection.)

It’s starting to get cold outside. Helena hasn’t found shoes yet; she’ll have to soon, because her feet ache and then they stop aching. She’ll have to find some place warmer to sleep. She’ll have to do something, something. She can’t die. Not yet. Not now.

Helena’s body doesn’t really know that, though, no matter how hard she tries to convince it. Helena’s body says: _I’m hungry_. Helena’s body says: _I’m so cold_. Helena tells it _I know, I know,_ but it won’t stop saying these things to her over and over anyways.

So she climbs through the window.

She doesn’t _mean_ to, she doesn’t, she doesn’t mean to, understand that she never meant to. But after all the lights in the house turn off, click click, and after the sound of footsteps leaves – Helena is through the window.

(It was unlocked.)

Inside the house is so warm that she has to bite her lip, hard, to keep from crying. It is such a nice house. Wood and soft carpets. Helena holds her breath and steps lightly, but no one comes downstairs to stop her. She steps closer to the piano, puts her hands feather-light on the keys. She walks her fingers over the notes: white then white then white-and-black then white again. Then she lifts up her hands and pretends to slam them on the keys, huffs a giggle to herself.

The kitchen is warm too. In the refrigerator there is a whole jar of peanut butter and Helena unscrews the top of it, scoops it out with her dirty fingers and licks her fingers clean until the entire jar is gone. Her belly is so full. It pours warmth through her whole body and she’s reaching for a bag of carrots and those are gone too. Yogurt in a container she scoops out with the same fingers and it’s gone. She’s full. She’s _full_.

She burps, flicks her tongue around her teeth, walks through the house. Her twin walks through here every day, and she touches _this_ wall, and she scuffs her feet like _this_ against the carpet. Helena walks – light, light – over to the staircase. There’s a hook on the wall with coats on it. Some of the coats are big, and some of them are small, and some of them are just Helena’s size. She takes one. She shouldn’t, but it’s warm and it’s her size and it smells like soap. Someone wore this who uses _soap_.

Helena takes the hat too. Then she’s out the window again.

* * *

Remember: the smart thing to do would be to stop coming back.

Remember: Helena always comes back.

This time there’s no piano, just yelling. _Sayruh aidun mind ifyulostthe jak ett butyuhafto tell me_ and her twin’s voice yelling _yuwudden beleeve me evenifaitoldyu ess so pissoff._

 _Pissoff, pissoff_. They scream at each other some more. Helena waits until eventually her twin groans, says _aimsorree alrite sorree ailostthe bluddie jak ett justleeve mealon_ and then things get very quiet and then one set of footsteps climbs the stairs. A few minutes of silence. Then the other set of footsteps walks over to the window – Helena holds her breath – leaves again. Up the stairs.

Helena sits shivering (less) (because she has a jacket now) for twenty more minutes, counting seconds under her breath, and then tries the window.

Still unlocked. She slithers in. The house is so quiet—

There’s a sandwich on the table. Helena walks up to it, studies it. There’s a note next to it on the table, in big letters Helena can’t read – some of the letters look right, but most of them don’t.

 _I KNOW YOU TOOK THE JACKET. I KNOW IT’S REALLY COLD OUT SO YOU CAN KEEP IT. IF YOU TOLD_ (and several words are crossed out, so Helena can’t read them) _THE WOMAN IN THIS HOUSE, THE BIG ONE, SHE COULD GET YOU A JACKET AND FOOD AND YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO STARVE OR FREEZE._

_ALSO, MY NAME IS SARAH. WHAT’S YOURS? WHY DO YOU LOOK LIKE ME? HOW DID YOU FIND US?_

Helena eats the whole sandwich while she’s staring at the note. Something in her brain is humming that all of this was meant for her, but that doesn’t make sense. People don’t do things for her. In the convent, they said she had devils inside her. No one would make her a sandwich. And: the last time she saw her twin face-to-face Helena got her yelled at, and: maybe that’s what they were yelling about before, that missing jacket, and: what if that maybe-mother locks Sarah in the basement because of what Helena did. This wasn’t her sandwich to eat. This wasn’t her life to step into.

Helena swallows the rest of it anyways, smears her finger around the plate to see if there’s anything left over. There isn’t. She just leaves a smudge of grime around the rim, one that won’t come off when she scrubs.

Out of some instinct she doesn’t know, she stuffs the note in her pocket. Then she pulls herself back out through the windowframe and makes her thoughtful way back to the pile of blankets she’s calling home.

(She’ll come back, though.

Helena always comes back.)


End file.
